Braxton McCoy

You want to get to an Air Force base instead of an Army one, right?

But we got in the air, and then I was bleeding out too much, so we had to stop in TQ to quad them.

You stop there to get more blood.

And then, again, we had to stop in Fallujah.

Holy shit, man.

Yeah, and they had a trauma med center there.

And so they started, that's where they put the PICC line in my neck, I think.

So at one point, I had like eight quarts of blood going in.

But I was developing compartment syndrome in my legs, so they were swelling internally, and they were doing everything they could to try to save my legs, you know?

So at Fallujah, they got me in traction splints, and I hadn't had any pain meds yet because my blood pressure was so low, they couldn't hit me with morphine, you know?

So they grabbed my legs and they gave me like a rag to bite on.

And man, the pain was intense enough that I was in and out anyway, I think.

But I bit down on that, and they got my leg on those traction splints and stretched them out, and then they took a knife and cut, obviously a surgical knife, not like a buck knife or something, but they split me from knee to hip on both sides all the way up and then put wound vacs in to try to peel that swelling and infection and that kind of shit out.

And then I went from there to Balad,

and then from balad to landstool and then from landstool to walter reed holy man yeah it was pretty intense how long are you at walter reed the let's see like four three or four months the the army put together a program at that time called cbhco which was like community-based

healthcare organization or something like that one of these army acronyms and There were what was really happening is there were so many dudes that were wounded at the time that they had they were run out of beds You know So they were trying to get guys once they were eligible for outpatient care They were trying to get them back to their hometowns for civilian hospitals just to offload You know, they said it was because they thought dudes would heal better and maybe they really did think that but I think it was probably because they were running out of space and

So I was there for like three months and then I did outpatient in Utah for another year and a half or so.

I think something like that.

Another few surgeries and rehab, like four times a week, you know, physical rehab.

And then they retired me in August of, I think it was August of 07.